


Somnolencia

by abel_runners



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: (seriously though these nightmares can get pretty violent), Angst, Angst with a Capital A fellas, F/M, Gen, Season 2 spoilers, Season 3 Spoilers, Season 4 Spoilers, Surreal, Trauma, Violence, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 15:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 16,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16267088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abel_runners/pseuds/abel_runners
Summary: You're hiding in a library of gold and crystal. Or, no, wait -- you're being torn to the bone by a malignant mist, or maybe you're eating pancakes with Sam when the sun turns red and the sandstorm blows in. Maybe it's you and Runner Eight and a cabin soaked by storm; a crackling fire and a steady voice.Dreams. Dreams upon dreams upon dreams. That's where you are.(Or: a collection of different Fives' dreams, each one inspired by a prompt sent in on tumblr.)





	1. Smoke Signals

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these dreams contain pretty heavy spoilers for seasons 2, 3 and 4, so keep that in mind reading ahead!
> 
> ***
> 
> The first prompt by another-runner-5: "My Five has a bit of a crush on Sam (though she hasn’t told him due to social anxiety), so I’m thinking she could have a lot of suppressed guilt that would induce a nightmare about Alice. She worries that she’s disrespecting Alice’s memory by replacing her in more ways than one, and it manifests in this dream. Bonus points if Sam comforts her when she wakes up. Take liberties! Thanks again!"

You’re running and it’s cold out. There is no feeling left in your toes, and the trees are frost-bound and the mud is all cracked ice.

Sam, at your ear: “You’re doing really well. Just grab that weapons cache under that car and then you’ll be done.” Spotting the frayed bag of ammo and your fumbling, numb fingers grab  it and slip it into your pack.

Sam, with an apologetic, warm laugh in his voice: “Looks like you got it! I know it’s freezing out – so thanks for doing this, Alice.”

You—almost trip. Stop in shock.  _Wait,_   _Alice_ _?_

Trying to open your mouth but it’s stitched shut, and you can’t—you can’t tell him that he’s slipped up, and you’re not Alice, and he’s still  _talking._

“Come on home – hey, what about this? When you get back, how about we make some of that hot cocoa? Maybe play some D&D with the doc? I know hot chocolate is a little too sweet for you, but I’ll be sure to add a little more water this time.”

_That never happened. We never drank hot cocoa. I’m not Alice, Sam._ There is a choking tightness in your throat. Your hands scratch for your mouth but it’s still gone, and stitched, and there’s nothing you can  _do._

And yet Sam is there with his voice goes so honey-soft you could cry. Because it’s not for you: none of this is for you. “I’m really glad I met you, y’know. I … This apocalypse hasn’t been easy for anyone, but having you around has made it – bearable.”

Your desperate eyes search the frozen, gray landscape. If you go back to Abel he’ll realize you’re not her and what then? Will the apocalypse become  _unbearable_? But where else could you go? Abel is all you have, and it is all you know.

“Anyway. Thanks for sticking around, I guess. I’ll stop being a big sap and start making the cocoa, aye?”

_But I’m not Alice. Alice is—_

The second you think it there is a body. Three bodies. Eight bodies. You try to gasp out, flinch back, but Abel’s walls loom in front of you, the barbed wire glinting in the harsh light. “Raise the gates!”

Bodies on the frozen snow. Red snow. Shaking, now, you see that every body is the same:  _Alice._ Alice gone gray and rotting. Alice with a bullet wound leaking out of her skull. Alice dead. Alice is  _dead_. 

“Great job today, Alice! Come on over to the comms shacks to warm up.”

_Don’t you—see her?_ Tears burn your eyes, and there is a chewing feeling in your stomach.  _I’m not her. She’s dead. Please ..._

But your feet move on their own. And you’re walking into the comms shack, and Sam has his back to you, and the room smells like thick chocolate and smoke. He turns. Your mouth aches from the stitches; from the writhing thing in your chest. He turns and he has two mugs in his hands and he’s grinning at you, bright, and—

“Oh! You’re not – you’re not Alice.” The smile falls, and he focuses in on you. He notices the shoes, the backpack, the  _Runner 5_ armband. Setting the mugs down, he moves in close, an edge of panic in his voice. “Why are you – why are you wearing her number? Where is she?”

And your mouth unstitches. You take a deep, dragging breath and stare at him, and you want to cry, and it still smells so strongly of sweetness and cocoa. “Sam … Don’t you remember?”

His eyes are stuck on the number on your wrist, a hard edge of glass in them. “Where’s Alice? Who are you?”

The decayed, spilled bodies. The gunshot. The blood seeping into the snow. You take another huge breath in but your lungs still feel like they’re shrivelling. Like your organs are frostbite. Like you can’t do this to him.

You can’t, but you have to.

“I’m sorry, but Alice … is dead. I’m your new Runner Five, remember? You said so yourself. You said—”

Sam’s glass eyes crack. The smell of chocolate is nauseating.

“What–? No. No, you’re wrong. Alice can’t be dead. She can’t be …” Another glance at the red-glaring 5 on your wrist. His eyes are swollen with tears. “And you’re  _not_ Runner Five.” There is a horrible grief threaded through his voice, and his body crumples into his chair, and he glares at you – at the unbearable idea of  _you._

Nothing but a whisper, you say: “I’m sorry.”

But it doesn’t matter. It never did.


	2. Relic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from run-runrunner5: (Sometime during season 3, for the dream prompts) 5's reaction at the thought of being immortal. Of being trapped in the living world. Of having to die over and over again. That wouldn't be pleasant at all, now would it?

You’re in Janine’s living room playing D&D. That’s where it starts. Sam and the gang are all there, and the room smells of candle-wax and sweet tea. The sun is slowly, slowly setting in the horizon, and you’re laughing at the way the doc keeps trying to talk her way out of a dragon’s maw. The corners of Sam’s eyes crinkle, and your chest is bubbly-warm, and you haven’t smiled this much in a while. Pencil in hand, you’re trying to figure out which spell would be best to get you out of this situation, when someone – Jody? Eugene? – asks who would be willing to get more popcorn from the kitchen. You volunteer, getting up. As you head towards the other room, you can’t help but glance back at the table full of your friends and feel a swell of deep gratefulness – because these people love you, and each other, and even in the midst of the apocalypse there is still joy. An oasis you can keep coming back to. 

_Stop being a sap and get the popcorn, Five._

Stepping into the kitchen, the sun flickers. You do not notice, hands filling the bowl and a hum on your breath. You almost feel normal. You almost feel good. Taking the popcorn and sneaking a piece or two, you step back into the living room.

It is empty.

You freeze in place.  _Huh?_   Your eyes dart around the room, trying to comprehend what you’re seeing – what you’re  _not._ The table you were all just sitting at is empty, dice and character sheets and candles all gone. The windows are dusted in grime. Nervously: “Guys? Very funny, but you can come out now.” A fragile laugh in your voice as you step forward, chewing on the inside of your lip. They must be pranking you. Must be hiding behind the couch. But how—

There is an armchair by the window at the far end of the room and you hear a distant, rattling cough.

You put the popcorn down and rush over, relieved. Someone is here. The prank is over, and you’ll all get back to playing D&D, and laugh over the way you thought they’d actually all disappeared into thin air, and everything will be fine. The squirming feeling in your gut will dissipate.

In the armchair, there is an old man. He is wearing a blue sweater, and that gasping cough, and his hair is near-falling out. Face wrinkled and back hunched. His milky eyes shift towards you, and when he sees you, they widen.

“Five … You’re here.”

Your body knows before your mind does. The way he says your name – the way his eyes look at you with a warmth so huge it’s almost overwhelming – it has to be him. It can’t be. It really, really  _cannot_ be him, but it is. 

“Sam? You …” Words. Words and emotion and anything you could ever understand fail you. This is impossible. This can’t be him. You were just laughing with him two seconds ago. You were only in the kitchen for a minute, not … all this. This can’t …

Voice so quiet you have to lean closer to hear. It is wet with age. “Yes. It’s me, really. You keep forgetting—” Cut off by his own coughing, his nails dig into the armchair. “—but it’s been years.”

The whole room sways.

“What? What are you talking about? Where's Maxine? Jody?” A terrible dizzying feeling spreads through you. It is whiplash and a vertigo so enormous you know it will swallow you. You know this cannot be happening.

Sam takes a shaky breath in. His eyes swell with moisture and redness, and he looks away from you. You glance at his aged, wrinkled hands and how they haven’t stopped shaking. Two minutes ago, you were playing D&D. Those hands were smooth and steady. This can’t be happening. “Please stop asking me that, Five. I can’t keep …”

Your stomach lurches. No.  _No._ You refuse to even entertain the thought; to entertain any of this. But you look at Sam, and the way he’s aged. You glance at your own body, and the way it has not. You still have salt on your fingers from the popcorn and your skin is soft and unblemished. You refuse this, but there is no way out.

Suddenly: a treadmill beep, loud and blaring, comes from every corner of the house. Sam’s body goes tight, and his eyes flicker to you, a weariness in them that is so deep you’re terrified he’ll collapse. He doesn’t. Instead, he hands you a headset. “It’s time. I keep thinking this will get easier, but it never does, does it?”

_What is he talking about?_

You’re on a run. That’s what he was talking about. The air is chilly, the ground covered in orange-brown dead leaves and a mist that does not lift. Your legs carry you forward, strong as ever, and Sam is at your ear. For a second you almost feel like the living room was a bad dream, but when he speaks his voice is frail and shaky, his breathing still a slat-wood rattle. “Okay, Runner Five. Head to …” A slow shuffle of papers and a mouse clicking. “The Old Mill. A runner there needs help.”

You get to the Mill, and it’s much older, now. The wood has been eaten through, and it’s missing its door. But you hear zombies, and you hear someone yelling and shouting. Your heartrate spikes. “Go! Run! Save them! You’re the only one who can do this, Five!” Sam, with his voice breaking on your name. But you listen. Push forward. The Old Mill is dark. Hay and clumps of soil stick to your shoes.

There is a small horde of bone-rotted zombies crowding half the barn. A young runner you’ve never seen before is cornered, his axe swinging but the hilt is on the verge of breaking, and you know that if you don’t get in there, he’ll be bitten. Your legs move before your mind does, and you slam a piece of wood into the floor.  _Distract them. Lead them away._ “Hey! Zombies! Look here, you disgusting corpse-faces!” 

The zombies don’t even look your way, and the runner is getting swarmed, and he’s screaming for help, now, and you need to think of something–! “Five – I hate suggesting this, but use blood. It’s the—” He’s coughing but you know what to do. A steel blade and your palm, and blood drips to the floor.

The zoms all turn, and for a second you feel a rush of victory. Until one lunges at you and almost grabs you. You stumble back towards the door, but the other runner hasn’t moved yet – frozen in panic, god he looks so young –

“Go! Get out of here!” You yell out, head jerking towards the broken-slat hole next to you, and he scrambles. He escapes.

That one second you lost to show him out is what does it. What undoes it.

You’re almost out. The sun is setting. You’re almost out but your foot catches. But the zombies are much too close now. So close you could puke, and you’re trying to throw yourself forward and out.

Sam, in between wheezing breaths and that damp, horrid cough: “Oh, god, Five—you can get out of there this time just go, just run, please—don’t let this happen again,  _please_ —!”

Teeth everywhere. Sinking so deep they go right through the layers of muscle and dig into the bone. And another bite, and another, and you’re falling to your knees. Crawling backwards. Hands slipping on mud but your body is bleeding, and the zombies swarm from all sides, and you’re screaming out sounds you did not know were inside of you and your skin is falling off and falling through and—

A thousand other saturated memories flood you. This is this happening over and over and over. Maybe it’s the old mill, or a hospital, or right outside Abel’s walls. But you are there. And your whole body is ripped apart, or shot, or burned to a husk. A sacrifice which saves lives. But you beg for mercy every time.

The sun flickers. You cannot notice.

* * *

Your eyes blink open to the wooden beams of a living room roof, and you blink out the sunspots from the orange glow of the sun, still, setting. Forever setting, just like you. You get to your feet. Soaked bandages cover healed wounds, and you understand. You don’t want to, but you do.

The room is quiet. Still: “Sam?“ 

A shuffle, a wheeze, in the faraway armchair. You trip forward, towards him. Still, still, even after so many years—

You reach Sam and it’s not Sam. Instead: a decayed, rotted body. His body. It is tilting, flaking, as dust stings your eyes. The black-hole hollows of his own eyes stare into you, unseeing and unfeeling. You choke on your breath – wanting to run, to get out, to never see this – but your hands. Your young, unwrinkled hands shake as they hover over his old, dead ones but there's—he’s …

Gone.

You’re left alone. You can feel it, can’t you? How Sam was the last. He was the last one of your friends who survived all this time. Sick to your bones and shaking, you want to crumble. Want anything but this. Anything but what you  _are._

A minute. A year. A thousand days pass as you stare at what's left of Sam’s body. It does not and cannot sink in. There’s a knock on the door at some point, and in comes running a young woman in a rose-patterned blouse you’ve never seen in your whole life. Through the loud buzz in your ears, you hear her say: “We need you, Runner Five. We’re in trouble.”

You notice, faintly, how she’s crying, and how she's so panicked and desperate because someone out there, who she deeply loves, who she’s spent nights playing some game and laughing and crying with is about to die. And you’re the only one left who can save them.

You swallow a bitter sigh and clench your jaw through the nauseating knowledge that you will never escape this cycle.  _Y_ _es_ ,  _of course_   _you will help_ , you say.  _No problem._

You follow her outside because you must. You don’t want to, but it’s who you are, isn’t it? Abel’s last resort, hail-mary, lifeline. Disconnected and drifting, disconnected and forgetting everyone who ever mattered, you are a relic of some old, half-faded origin. You don't remember how you got here.

_Of course you'll help._


	3. Into the Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from an anon: Could you write something about a male runner five with feelings for both Sam and runner eight? Honestly, that’s me right now.

There is a flood and it is dark out – the only light left is the orange, flickering glow of the streetlights. Cars veer off to the sides of streets, people stumbling out into the torrential, soaking rain. The wind pierces through you, clothes sticking to your skin. You've got blisters on your heels from the wet socks and the constant running.

Someone tugs on your hand, face hidden in shadow and the water dripping into your eyes. A voice you’d recognize anywhere: “Hurry, Five. We’re almost there.”

Runner Eight with her calm-under-fire, unwavering grip. On the situation. On your hand.

Breath ragged and damp, the streetlights flicker in and in and out, and there is a searing ache in your chest you can’t quite understand.

And there’s a door--wooden, leading to a cabin, and it creaks open, saving you from the insistent pour of the rain. The scent of wet, soggy pine and dust reaches you, and you breathe out as you close the door, relieved to be out of that storm.

Eight’s in front of you, wringing out her soaked hair and taking off her water-logged shoes. You do the same, and she looks around the cabin. “I’ll get a fire going to dry us out. Look around for food, would you?”

You do. The cabin goes quiet, the only sound the muffled pour of rain and the distant rumbling of thunder. Eight shuffles around the fireplace, and you resist the urge to turn and look at her, at how the light glances off her wet hair or how she steadily moves log to fireplace, those strong arms making it seem so easy. A sense of comfort washes over you as you open cupboard after cupboard, finding the staples for – well, not much, but maybe Eight can whip something up out of it. “I think I found enough for pancakes. Found some of that banana Nesquik, too.”

You hear Eight strike a match, and an orange, smoky glow settles in the room. You recognize the slight smile in her voice: “I take it you’d like me to make those, then? No offense, Five, but your pancakes are, ah, a little bland.” Ignoring the heat in your face, you nod, and she walks over to the stove. “Warm up by the fire. I’ll be right there.”

A blink and you’re sitting in a mahogany carved chair, heating up by the fire, your clothes half-dry. The storm rages on outside. Eight hands you a plate of pancakes, the delicious smell getting the hint of a smile out of you. “Thanks.” She just gives you a gentle nod, and bites into her creation. You try to ignore the tightening of your stomach as she closes her eyes and hums. She gives you a sidelong, somehow knowing look. You dart your eyes away, keeping them fixed on the glowing of the fire.

“You know, Five, you’ve always been my favorite,” she says, something close to tenderness in her voice. She is a steady, relentless presence.

And suddenly. And suddenly, the fire cracks and the thunder booms, the cabin shuddering. You look back up at Eight, startled, except—Runner Eight isn’t sitting there anymore.

It’s Sam. He is sitting there, his clothes the ones that are soaked, his eyes that are warmth-tinged and looking directly at  _you._ “I know that’s sort of unfair to the other runners, but really, I mean that. You were always my favorite from the start.”

Normally, you’d be sort of melting from what he’s saying, but right now? You’re just deeply confused. “Where’s Runner Eight?”

Sam tilts his head, frowning. “What do you mean? We’ve never had a Runner Eight.”

A bolt of fear down your spine. “She made these pancakes, Sam—she got me out of the storm.”

And now Sam looks a little hurt. “You literally just watched me make these. We got flour everywhere, see?” He holds up his sleeve, and there is flour there, and you’re actually scared, now. “We got to the cabin together, too. Are you … Are you feeling alright?” The glint of worry in his eyes brightens, and he leans in closer. Your heart thuds, hard, at that, and at how he carries the scent of old pine and sweet banana.

“I’m feeling fine.” But the gnawing, sharp-glass feeling in your stomach won’t go away. “You really don’t remember Runner Eight? Sara Smith? She’s tall. Terrifying. Loyal. Loves knives and being cryptic.”

Sam sighs, looking apologetic. “No. I really don’t know who you’re talking about. It sounds like it’d be hard to forget her.”

A small smile at that, and you can’t help but notice how the fire reflects off Sam’s face, and the way his body leans in towards yours as if on instinct. Even through your worry, you feel eased and warm in his presence. He just—does that to you. You glance back at the fire, and when you bring your eyes back to Sam he’s flickering in and in and out. You frown, the palm of your hand rubbing at your eyes, and when you open them back up—

Sam is gone. Eight is back, still giving you that side-glance and swallowing her bite of pancake. You flinch, because what is—what is going on, here? Sara's brows pinch together, worried, when she sees the look on your face. “Something wrong? My pancakes not up to snuff?”

“Where did Sam go?”

“What are you talking about? Who’s Sam?”

Your stomach drops. “Sam. Sam Yao. Our radio operator. Come on, Eight, you have to know  _Sam_. He’s saved our lives countless times.”

Eight’s face remains blank. “I really don’t know who you’re talking about. Our operator has always been Amber. Are you feeling okay?” There is a flash of concern in her gaze, and she’s leaning in, and she smells faintly of vanilla and sweat, and—

“I—I don’t know. I think …”

You don’t get to finish your sentence because there is a hand on your forehead, and it is Eight. You blink and it is Sam. Both flickering in and in and out again. Hand warm on your skin. But it isn’t right, because which one is actually in the cabin? Which one actually—

A double-voice. Half-Eight, half-Sam: “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, Five.”

A double-ache in your stomach. The banana pancakes dissolve in your mouth. The cabin walls break apart, flooding in rain and the orange glow of streetlamps. You are soaked to the bone. A hand is still on your forehead, thumb brushing soft, but the fire is sizzling out under the relentless torrent of rain, and all you feel is ache in your chest, and water sliding down your back, and a ringing in your ears that will not fade. A torn feeling.

A terrible torn feeling.


	4. Baseball Bat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Spoilers for season 3 and 4!) 
> 
> A prompt from runner522: Maybe my Five could wake up from a nightmare about nearly killing Sam, and then she’s honest with Sam in real life? Where she admits that she’s scared that he’ll hate her for having these dreams and for still hearing Moonchild’s voice.

You and Sam are watching TV in the comms shack. He miraculously found your favorite show – the one you thought you’d never see again after that first news story broke. A hazy warmth, a quilted blanket on your shoulders, a safe little corner in the apocalypse.

You’re about to get to the best part – the part that always makes you smile – when the TV clicks, clicks, and shudders into darkness.

“Ugh—that wire must’ve fallen out again. No, no, I’ll do it, Sam," you say, heaving yourself out of that coziness and over to the TV set.

Leaning in towards the screen, hands fiddling with the wire in question at the back, the TV flicks back on. But you don't quite celebrate because it’s all static, and your show is still gone. You lean further onto the metal frame of it, digging deeper for the right wire, and Sam is messing with the remote.

It happens right then.

The static loud beside your ear gets louder. It sort of aches, like Sam turned the volume all the way up, and you look at the screen and the static is  _big_. Looming. Your hands still, eyes getting caught on the grainy-white, growing wall of glass.

A break in the light.

Your fingers are suddenly compelled to trace the screen, bend into the screen – or the static bends out of it – and it’s  _crawling_. Up your arm. Skittering and jumping right up your fingers into your forearm and you’re so shocked you jump away from the TV, you swat at your arm, but the static is already out, and free, and it hungers.

It squirms up to your face before you can cry out, and there, it makes a home in your eyes. Digs and digs and burrows into your very brain.

The screen and you and the screen go dark. Body stock-still. From miles or centuries away, Sam: “Hey, uh, you okay? Get zapped or something?”

No answer but there’s another voice much, much closer. You feel her breath on the back of your neck, or inside of it, or right above the bone-bridge of your nose.

_Five. So good to finally be back._

Moonchild’s voice.

You try to flinch, or run, or do anything but listen, but you are stuck in her grasp. Spider and bee. Spider and venom.

_Get up._

For some reason, you do. The command wrenches your muscles into action, and you’re on your feet before you can even think about stopping it. Dizzy, dizzy, you try to grasp at your forehead – rip her out, maybe, maybe that’s the idea – but with a disapproving hum inside you she stops it and leaves your hands trembling and twitching at your sides.

No. You will  _not_  let this happen again.

_Oh, come on, don’t say that. This is a good thing. An improvement, really._

A baseball bat in the corner and it is grasped in your hands.

Sam’s distant, distant nervous laugh: “What, you planning on smashing the TV ‘til it works?”

_Let’s finish the job._

No. No. No.

Your feet drag forward anyway.

No. No.

Your hand grips the hilt of the bat, its nails sticking out, rusted, bent, and getting caught on the carpet. Sam’s hands go still, and he’s staring right into your eyes, and there is a flicker of – horror. Recognition. Terror. Your hand clenches the bat so tight it creaks, and you raise it high.

The corners of the room burn a deep ember-red. Your muscle-fibres sting, glow, shake. And the big blue abyss. In your stomach. In your head. Your feet. Still. Ever-closer to his leaning-back body, to his soft skin, to the end of everything and all.

And with her voice, wrapped around your brain in a rope so tight you don’t know how you’ve ever moved without it, she says:  _Do it._

No!

It happens despite everything inside you leaning against it: a heavy weight giving, a string snapping, a door flooded though.

“Five,  _wait_ , Five—please don’t, don’t—she’s dead, she doesn’t control you, you’re still  _you_ — _help!_ Somebody—please—Five—!”

The first bone-hit floods the room with angelic-pink light. You can almost feel Moonchild’s smile.

_Oh, very good, my Five. Keep it up._

You’d rather break your own body with this very bat, or run outside and get swallowed by zombies. Anything but this,  _anything_ but the blood now dripping onto the couch, any—anyth—

She doesn’t let you finish your thoughts, and cuts them off right at their root. She lurches your body towards the twisting, shrieking, writhing figure of your best friend as he struggles towards the door and away from the monstrous thing right behind him. From you.

The second hit cuts off the begging, but not the movement. More angelic-pink light flares up, and the corners of the room burning red or orange or they’re damnation, here, already. Hell, waiting.

_End this!_

Somehow, your arms are shaking towards that next hit when there’s—a hand on your wrist. His hand, slippery and swollen, curling and grasping and his fingertips dig in to your skin. It is a horrific softness even among the violence. And for the smallest of smallest seconds, Moonchild cuts out. The rope unties, the light darkens, the muscles loosen.

Sam’s eyes bore right into yours, pupils all blown out. Like he can sense that you’re back, back and terrified and one hit away from killing him. Grip tightening, lifeline: “Five, stop! You can fight her. You can get away from her!  _Please_!”

You step back, arm tensing to throw the bat to the other side of the room, and grab some bandages, and take Sam to the hospital, escape just within your reach when—

_You’re not getting rid of me that easily._

The third hit is what does it.

You’re left with pastel-pink glistening over all the red, and your shaky hands, and the dripping, soaked bat. The heavy rain and the tick of the clock are the only sounds left in the room. In you. You stare and stare at the red pool of blood until sudden movement to your right catches your eye: you look. It is a cat glaring at you from the window. Hissing, its yellow eyes turn the rain into snow. Frost spider-webs over the windows and seeps in under the door. The cat flicks its tail, and there is garbled, joyful singing somewhere beyond all this. Your very own Christmas-night nightmare.

The cat jumps off the sill. Your eyes are forced back to the unbearable thing right in front of you.

Sam is dead.

_There. Was that so hard, honey? I’ll see you later, you know – I’m all you have left. Isn’t that nice?_

You’re frozen on your knees when the rope releases, kisses your frontal lobe, and promises its return. Your body is given back to you but your eyes stay glued to what’s left of Sam’s head, and the way his face is a wood-pecker’s paradise. Sap-blood drools out.

Eventually, there are hands grabbing at you, voices – real, warm and torn-open voices – yelling and scratching and shaking but you don’t feel a thing.

Eyes only on him. On what you just did.

The baseball bat is still clenched tight. You know you will never let it go. 

Behind you, somewhere, the TV flicks itself back on. Blaring. Voices so sharp they’d hurt if they could but on it is your favorite movie, but wrong, but distorted. Just one scene looped, getting faster. Hands keep pulling at you. Forward and away from his body, but you are rooted and bound and never leaving this room, not really.

You breathe in. In and in and in – gasping, now – for the first time since you started breaking him open. The ice-cold oxygen swells through you, and the sickening blend of angelic-pink light, the glow of the TV and the burning corners of the room all suddenly drop into a gray – that kind of gray dirty bedsheets turn into. A gray that is in your eyes, throat, mouth. Smothering and the hands drag you up, shake, stare, and sob but you—but her—but she made you do it. She … Made you. The rope, the pink, the honey-voice  _made_ you.

Sam’s dead body glares back at you. It does not care who made who.  He is dead, and  _yours_  are the hands that are soaked in his blood.

* * *

You wake up sweating and displaced, sweating and staring at a baseball bat propped against the wall. Immediately, without your input, your hands knock it to the floor.You're up onto your feet, eyes searching for the broken bits of Sam’s head, for the light and hands and television but the room is—

Your room. Not the comms shack. Not the place you keep going back to, night after night after night.

_God. It was another of those stupid dreams._

Exhaling,slumping back down onto your bed, you do your best to shake off the image of Sam’s head splintered wide open. You try to ignore the way your stomach lurches with every breath, or the sweat pooled at the small of your back, or the swathes of nausea overtaking your stomach. But the violence of that dream is seared into every space between every thought. Looping. Stuck. There’s no way you’ll get back to sleep now.

_Fresh air. Maybe that’ll …_

You end up at the comms shack, because you know Sam’s taking the night shift, and there is light under the door, and maybe he’ll help. Sam always helps. But – you’re hesitating, hand hovering above the handle. You shift from foot to foot, and swat a mosquito off your neck. You gulp in air like that'll ease any of the dread.

_Fuck, what if I open that door and Sam’s body falls out? What if her voice comes back and I actually do kill him, and the dream was an omen, and the blood and the metal and the pieces of brain and I can’t keep having these dreams or hearing that voice or pretending like—_

The door opens and Sam runs right into you, snapping your thoughts back into line. “Oh—! Oh. It’s just you, Five. Uh, why are you standing out here?” His hands are nervous and fidgety. You’re a little bit afraid to look up, because what if his face is full of bleeding holes, or axe marks, or …

A pause. You can sense his eyes focusing in on you.

“Hey … you okay?” He says, his voice going so gentle you almost tear up, because no, you’re  _not_ okay, and you still haven’t looked him in the eyes. All you do is shake your head, but he knows what to do. Of course he does. “Here, come on in. Let’s sit down. Maybe finish that pack of Kit-Kats Jody found.”

When you finally do look at him, intense relief swamps you because oh, thank God, you didn’t kill him, and his face is still his face, and he is not dead. You’re just sitting on the couch. Him, draping a blanket on your lap. Him, handing you a Kit-Kat with a gentle smile. Him, with no blood dripping from anywhere. Alive.

_But you almost killed him all those months ago, remember? You were two seconds away from it. Who’s to say her voice won’t make you do it again, hm?_

The candy goes stale in your mouth. You look at him and can’t hide, can’t run, need to share the big terrible _thing_ inside of you.

“Sam.”

“Yeah?”

Deep breath. Deeper breath than that. The weight of the bat in your hands. The nails. The bits of bone and her –  _spit it out._ “I keep having these nightmares. About hurting you. Or … Killing you. Moonchild is always there, and it’s so violent, and I’m … I’m really scared that they’re gonna happen someday because I keep—”

You cut yourself off, swallowing against the hot ache at the back of your throat and keeping your eyes fixed on the floor. There is swelter-shame all over your skin, because you said too much, you  _did,_ and he hates you now. He must be scared of you now.

Sam’s whole body softens, though, and he shifts closer to you. “Oh. Oh, Five, those dreams sound terrible. No wonder you haven’t been sleeping well lately. You just had one?”

“Yeah. It was a pretty bad one, too. I'm kind of scared I’ll actually – I don’t know – hurt you, I guess.”

The corners of the room stay dark, the TV behind you stays off, and there is no angelic-pink light outside. But there could be. You know there  _could_ be, if enough things went wrong.

“I don’t know, really, what mind-control was like, but I do know that you’re  _you_ , y’know? Now that she’s dead, you’ll always  _be_  you, even with these bad dreams. I know you’d never intentionally hurt me, and the fact that you’re worried about it at all shows that. That has to count for something, right?” His steady voice keeps you from floating off, but what he’s saying isn’t quite right, because he doesn’t know the extent of it. That sticky, fish-oil taste in your mouth gets worse, because they’re not just bad dreams, and Moonchild is not really dead. Not to you.

The intolerable pressure at the corners of your vision gets worse. 

You can't do this anymore.

“I haven’t been honest with you. Not really.”

Sam takes in a quiet breath, going still for the smallest of seconds. He shifts, though, and opens back up.  _Too kind,_ you think, but stop thinking before you can talk yourself out of telling him. A strange sort of recklessness seizes you, pushes you forward, shoves you over the edge.

“This might sound a little crazy, but I’ve been ...” Choke it out, choke it out, a putrid secret, an infected wound in your stomach. “I’ve been hearing Moonchild’s voice. On missions. When I’m in danger. It’s so intense and terrible and that’s why I’m scared the dreams might come true, because she isn’t dead to me, Sam, and if I hurt you, I don’t know how I’d be able to …” You grip the blanket in your fingers, breath hitching and eyes welled up with hot tears. 

"What you’re saying is … is that you’ve been hearing Moonchild’s voice like in those New Canton rumors, right?”

“Yeah. Sort of. I’m not sure it’s the same thing. It feels very  _real_.”

Sam's hand hovers over your shoulder before it drops. He lets out a heavy breath. “Jesus. I can’t imagine how hard that must be on you. Really. To have that remnant of her still lurking around like some B-movie ghost is – it must be so tough. I’m sorry.”

Sam doesn’t kick you out, or turn away in disgust. None of the worst-case-scenarios you’d convinced yourself would happen actually happen. Sam listens, he eases, he  _understands._

But you can’t quite believe it. You can’t, because you know you must be rotten to the core, and why can’t he see that? Why does he keep  _forgiving_  you? “You don’t think I’m a danger to you? You’re really not afraid of me?”

“No. Of course not. You’re my  _friend_. Whatever this thing is, I want to help you through it. I know you’d do the exact same thing for me. We can talk about with the doc, okay? Figure something out, just like always. This doesn’t change anything—you don’t have to deal with it alone anymore, that’s all.”

Some of the disbelief melts away with the overwhelming sincerity of it all:  _he wants to help me. I don’t have to pretend anymore. He wants to help._

You’re hugging him before you know it, holding on like he might just change his mind, like this could be the last hug you ever get, like the pink light might show up and ruin everything before you know it. He rests his chin on your head. He doesn’t hate you. That wound you’ve been dragging around all these months slows its hemorrhaging – starts to stitch itself up, maybe – and you’re that much lighter.

“God, Sam … Thank you.”


	5. Heat Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anonymous prompt: Can you write something based off the line “It’s amazing, Five, the things you can make yourself believe”? Thank you!! I’ve read everything you’ve posted and I love all of it!

Everything is fine until the sun turns red.

You look up and see it, and the wind is knocked out of you:  _what—what the—?_

You trip forward, eyes stuck on the sun. The … red sun. Shaking your head, you rub at your eyes, blinking so hard it hurts, because you must be seeing things. But when you open your eyes back up, the sun is still that huge, terrible  _red_ color. How …? That can’t be right. It can’t be. The sun should’t be red. But …

You pinch at your skin. Not dreaming. Press at your eyelids a little harder, but nothing changes, except the panic tightening its hold around your throat.

“Five? You good?”

Jody is at your side, squinting at your frozen form, her feet still running in place. You stare at her. Mouth open in shock.

“What do you—? Jody, the  _sun._ Look.”

She glances at the sky, half-laughing at you. “Uh, yeah, that’s the sun. What about it? You that shocked it’s finally a nice day?”

“You don’t … It’s  _bright_  red. I’m not joking around. Seriously, it’s turned  _red_. Look at it!”

And now she’s frowning. Glancing at the sun and then at you and then back at the sun. “I think – I think you’ve been out here a little too long. C’mon. Let’s get you some water, yeah?”

She has you by your arm, and you grit your teeth, pulling out of her grip. “ _Jody!_ I’m not kidding. Something is wrong with the  _sun!_ We need to—”

“Five, it’s okay. The sun’s fine. Let’s – get into the shade for a bit. I think you might have a touch of heatstroke, that’s all this is. Let me help,” she says, a lot softer now. But you've still got your jaw clenched.

The shimmering-red light glints off her hair. Abel and all its buildings are bathed in its ominous glow, and you can do nothing but swallow and cave under her steady, gentle gaze. Maybe … Maybe it is the heat. Maybe you’ll go inside, drink some water and cool off, and everything will go back to normal.

It does not go back to normal.

The sun is inside Jody’s eyes. She hands you a water bottle and her pupils are a glowing, spotlight-crimson. You stumble back, dropping the bottle.

Jody smiles at you, but it’s not her normal bubbly grin. It’s sharp, and wide, and too  _much_. She steps closer. “Oh, no, Five. None of that. I’m sorry it had to come to this – you’ve always been my friend, y’know?”

Her hand on your bicep, nails sinking in. The red’s got you rooted to the spot.

“You never should’ve looked up. You were never supposed to  _see._ ”

Outside, there is a dust storm rattling at the windows. The sand is eating Abel whole.

And Jody kills you with her very own bare hands.

* * *

You wake up with a jolt, sweat soaking your back. The image of Jody’s glowing, murderous eyes clings onto you as you drag yourself out of bed and into your day. But with a strange sense of relief, you notice that it’s raining today. There is no sun you can check, just in case. It was another nightmare. Everything's okay. So you go to mess hall, you go on a mission, and you enjoy the rain sliding off your skin. Slowly, slowly you forget about the water bottle and track and the way Jody choked the life out of you.

You forget. You wipe yourself clean of that dream.

And then you’re headed towards the showers when the sun breaks through the clouds.

It is red.

You stop. And you stare. And then you desperately – shaking – dig your palms into your eyes. Because that can’t be. That was a dream. You are not dreaming. The sun is not red.

Except it is. Even with your vision blurry, even with your fingers pinching hard at your flesh, it still  _is_.

You’re about to break into a run and—and—fuck, who knows what you’re going to do here but someone’s bumping into you, a voice right next to you.

“Five? Earth to Five?”

You wire-snap back into your body and find Simon right there, a half-smile on his lips. His eyes follow yours: to the sky.

“You see something up there in the big blue? Maybe a way to get a hot shower? Because,  _wow,_ Janine is ruthless with these ice-cold ones lately. I get we’ve gotta save electricity, but you’d think … Uh, Runner Five? You good? You seem kind of out of it.”

Your voice is not your voice: “Simon. The sun. It’s red.”

He stills. Frowns. Looks back up at the sun and then at you and then to the sun again. “Is that some new way of getting me to shut up? Say something nonsensical to throw me off?” He gives you a too-high-pitched chuckle and his hands are clenched tight.

You glance at him, and you know he doesn’t see it, either. He can't see how the light tinges the ground a strange sort of reddish brown or how it glances off his neon shirt like a beacon.

“I’m serious. Something’s wrong with the sun. We need to tell someone, or do something, because something bad is gonna—”

His hand grips your shoulder and you flinch back so hard you almost fall over. His eyes widen with an apology, and you swallow down the image of Jody and her icy fingers on your throat. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just … It’s amazing, Five, the things you can make yourself believe.” He softens, just a little. “Look. I promise the sun isn’t red and the world isn’t ending all over again. Let’s get you inside, okay? I think you might be a little sleep deprived from the looks of it.”

You stand your ground, narrowing your eyes at him. “No. I’m not going inside. Not again.”

"Alright, alright, fine," he says with a sigh, and his hands reach into his backpack and he's grabbing something –- you step back, fear shooting through you. _Weapon?_ “Hey, easy. It’s just some water, see?” He holds up the bottle, and you eye it, legs still tensed to run for it.

But his eyes stay unchanged. His posture is gentle – so gentle it’s almost painful. But it shifts something inside you. That well of fear that’s been bubbling and rising all day is eased by the way he hands you the bottle, cracks a joke and does nothing else. You drink and drink, eyes forced to the sky.

The sun is that much closer and the red is beating through you. The radiation is so intense you can feel your skin  _welt._

Suddenly: sand. Everywhere. An enormous cloud of sand sweeps through you, and you drop the water bottle in shock. It is in your mouth and you are cut off from Simon, vision obscured by an impenetrable wall of amber. Coughing, gasping, with sand in your mouth and cutting across your cheeks, you start stumbling forward, out, anywhere else. It whirls around you, hearing nothing but an overwhelming rush of white noise. Your shoulder eventually slams into something solid. Panicked, panicked and dizzy you feel your way through the clouds of dust and end up half-crawling right into the bathrooms. You slam the door behind you, gagging and gasping.

Simon is there. He’s got you on your feet, hands brushing the sand from your eyes and ears and everything. “Oh, thank god, Five, I thought you were a goner, I—”

You cough, spitting out the dirt and you finally look up. You finally  _look._

When you meet his eyes: the sun is inside them.

“Shit!” Backing up, backing out, but there is no escaping that horrible light.

“How many times do we have to tell you? You're never supposed to  _see!"_

Simon is grinning that too-wide grin, and his pupils are pinpoint-red, and they are fixed on yours. There is a pipe. There is sand leaking through the cracks in the roof.

There is your blood on the tiles.

* * *

It keeps happening: everything is fine until the sun turns red.

Again. Again. Again.

Again.

You wake up but not. You wake up terrified, wake up crying, wake up despondent. No matter what you do, the inevitable always happens: the sun burns red. No one believes you. The red light goes inside someone you love, the sand consumes Abel, and they kill you. Over and over and over and over. Until you know all their lines, and stop responding, and do not check if the sun is red or not. Because it always is, and today will always be the day you die.

One day, though, you stop trying to fight it or fix it or survive it. You do something different: you leave.

The sun is red when you slip out of Abel’s gates, and you can hardly believe it lets you, but you are not one to question luck.

No one tries to stop you, but you do not look back at Abel’s walls. You do not dare to, just in case there is a horde of sun-red-eyes glaring right back at you.

You walk straight into the building, incoming, eternal sandstorm. 

It welcomes you with a sigh of relief even as the sand stings the softness of your eyes and leaves you choking and wheezing on it. It welcomes you as you heave yourself forward, each step blistering your feet and taking you further and further away from Abel and the red-eye-deaths and that terror -- that relentless terror.

Slowly, slowly, you drag yourself deeper and deeper into the void of the sand. Days and nights and days and days pass. You do not stop. The sand binds itself ever-deeper into your body.

Eventually, what needs to happen happens: you go blind.

And here, at last, the sun stops existing.

A thousand whispers: _Finally, you understand. You were never meant to see, Runner Five. You were never meant to see._


	6. Without Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from ceem-902: I just feel like Five would get flashbacks of the past in their head. But only in dreams. Maybe the reason they can’t remember anything from before was because they're in a sort of advanced simulation. Just in a resting state in the real world. But they don't think anything of the dreams and they go back to live their life at Abel.

You're in a shadowy, low-lit room. The edges of furniture and machinery are diffuse and difficult to discern, and there is a sticky, sharp sort of chill in the air. And there is a thin, blue hum. It instantly latches onto the back of your brain, and when you try to step deeper into the room and find where it starts and where it ends, your searching hands grasp at nothing.

You blink and suddenly—the room is flooded with blistering white light, and you stumble back. Through the spots in your eyes, there is a lab coat and the sharp curve of something large and metal and unknown. Hands grab at your arms and sit you down on something soft and you can do nothing about it.

“…with us. Has to be done.”

“—only candidate who passed all our requirements …”

A vague, wet panic sets in because you can’t quite  _hear_ them, ears all muffled, and all you can see is the floor and your own muddied running shoes glinting against tiles. The grip of hands on your arms tightens. There is a silver, glinting ring on one of the fingers. That thin humming gets louder, the walls still blurred, and you want to ask where you are. Why you’re  _being held._

You don’t get a chance because there is a needle and it is in your  _arm,_ pinching, and the fear digs right into your bones.  _Where am I—? Why—?_

Hands dragging. Hands carrying. Hands clawing into your skin and sinew and muscle.

A blue ceiling and flickering lights. You're trying to struggle, but there is a weight, and you still don’t  _know_ where you are. Why there are hands. Why you can’t do anything but watch.

“—is ready. Begin.”

A hiss and the hands are pushing you backwards. A metal casing surrounds you, and the world goes dark and then darker than dark. 

You want to kick -- up, out, because this can’t be  _right,_ and you want to scream, but you can't. You can only squirm.

A flooding, hissing noise. You flinch as liquid trickles down your back, ice-cold and gel-like. You hear distant voices, maybe, but the one sound you can’t get away from is the incessant, panicked beating of your own heart.  _This is wrong! Mistake!_

The liquid is at your mouth. Down your throat, up your nose, thick and choking you, they're _drowning_ you in here, and there are hands reaching from its depths. Their nails grab at your bones and drag you deep, all quicksand horrible, and there is a piercing scream at the back of your throat.

A hiss. A hiss. A hiss.

A harsh whisper says:  _Runner Five._

* * *

You wake up cold, the light of rising sun the only thing outlining your mess of a room. Shivering a little at the dream still clinging to you, you roll out of bed and swallow the dryness in your mouth.  _God, that was creepy. No more horror movie nights with Sam._ The sun gets brighter, and you pull on your socks. Your running shoes. Your backpack.

Shaking off the feeling of drown, of slimy gel, of white-coat terror; you make your way to the gates, greeting Sam and Doctor Myers as you breathe in the fresh, smooth air. The air does not turn to liquid, and the ground stays dirt, and you do not choke to death. 

A grounding breath, and you take heart in what you have here – in your terrifying, but viscerally  _real_ life at Abel. Your friends, your mission, your heavy-set backpack, and you _run_. Just like always.


	7. Spotlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Note: season 3 spoilers!) 
> 
> From an anon: I think my Five dreams about all those people on the Letecia Greenwald, and getting the blame they think they deserve for it. And if it’s not too much trouble, maybe Sam could be there too? (I am such 5am trash…)

You and Sam are in the library, laptops and notes scattered over the table. Studying, maybe. A window is open, the warm spring breeze brushing the back of your neck. You’ve been here all morning, and he brought you coffee, and it’s been nice. Well, as nice as being stuck in the library studying can realistically be, at least.

Sam glances at you with a bit of a smile as he eats another grape, something warm and soft in his gaze. A whisper: “Hey. You want to take a break in a bit? This module is killing me.”

You stretch your arms above your head. “Yeah. I could use some fresh air. Maybe a cookie from Tesco.” He grins at the thought of that, and you nudge him with your leg. “But only  _one_  this time. Remember last week? We almost OD’d on sugar.”

He dramatically flares out his arms: “And what a way to go.”

With an eye-roll and drizzly warmth in your chest you get up, grabbing your bag. You happen to glance down the aisle of books, and there’s a—shadow. Flickering just out of view. You blink, shaking your head.  _I really do need some air._

You turn back to Sam but he’s not—he’s not there. You frown, looking around. He was just there. Did he go to the bathroom? Is he pranking you?

You keep looking behind shelves and on your phone and that's when it finds you. The shadow. It is by the books, but it is not a shadow anymore.

It is a body. Unrecognizable with its skin blistered, charred and peeling, and its eyes are yellow spotlights. They are piercing right into you. You gasp back, taking one, two, twenty steps away, and you’re stumbling over your feet and slamming your hip into the desk, and you’re calling for Sam but the library is empty—

Only you and that thing.

You make it outside somehow, big, heavy panic pushing you forward. Sweat pricks your brow, and you chance a glance back at the library, and in the window it is there. Staring. Burned and staring and dead.

"Shit," you curse to no one and it is at the door. It drags towards you, its legs bending all wrong.

So you run. You’re on a road, and the sun is hotter than before. Almost like it's mid-summer. You keep running, though, a deep ache set into your thighs and you desperately wonder where Sam is, breathing morphed into a sharp wet wheeze. You sprint and dash and look behind you and you can’t feel your fingers from the panic. From the heat. From the pain in your stomach.

You run until you don’t.

Your foot catches on something. You stumble and you fall, chin splitting open on the asphalt. The white-hot, stinging pain is nothing when you remember that burned body, that _thing_ , the thing you’re fleeing from and its spotlight eyes—

You look back to see what you tripped on. This is where you die, isn't it?

Your foot is caught on a hand, and the hand is attached to a body, and the body is charred and wet and staring at you. And the fingers are twitching.

Limbs disconnected from brain, you crawl forward and up, stumbling onto your feet. Dizzy from the pounding pain in your chin, it takes your eyes a second to clear. To understand what you’re looking at.

It’s not just one body. It is ten. It is twenty. Fifty. A mass of them, all burned and horribly blistered, and piled on top of each other and all of them— _all_ of them are staring at you. A wall of spotlight-yellow eyes. Jolting, spasming legs and arms and necks.

Your stomach wants to escape your body. You step back and away because you can’t—this can’t—

“Runner Five.”

A whisper of a hundred voices all at once.

And you  _know_.

Deep, deep in your core, you know who these people are.

_The Comansys flotilla._

“Why did you do this to us?” The shimmering, lotus-swarm whisper asks, and you’re turning around. Can’t look at the swollen-wet bodies; the worm-eaten, twisting limbs. At what you did.

More bodies. Every step you take, no matter the direction, there is a body. Looking up at you and it is burned alive and rotting with sea-water.

You cannot escape.

The whisper, drilling down into your skull: “How could you, Five? You killed us.  _You did this!_ ”

You see arms grabbing hold – protecting – a smaller body and it is a child, a child with—with—

You can’t bear to look. You can’t _stand_ any of this, and you can’t escape it, and the scent of rotten, scorched flesh is searing your nose, and your eyes haven’t stopped watering, and your hands are shaking and where is Sam, where is he and this and all this is—

_This must be my penance._

“I’m right here, Five.”

Behind you, there is a voice, and it is _his_ , so you whirl around, and there he is.  _Sam._ Alive. Whole. Here.

“Sam. Sam, we …” A glance at the bodies twitching on the ground. Acid scorches the back of your throat. “We need to leave.”

Your hand reaches towards him: the man with the kindest, softest smile in the library. The man who’s kept you safe and hopeful and  _alive_  through the darkest moments in your life and who you trust like nothing else – towards your best friend.

You reach and he steps back.

Something in your gut twists, sharp, and you look up at him. The question on your mouth dies when you see his face, because there you see painted the sharp, severe lines of something so unlike the Sam you know it’s vertigo-dizzying, and you—don’t understand. You don’t understand.

“Sam?”

The yellow-spotlight eyes on the road bore into you.

He takes another step back. Glances at the bodies and then you and how they surround you.

“You killed them. You killed all these people, Five. All of these people with lives and hopes and dreams and you just—!” He cuts himself off, speechless. Because of you.

“I—I didn’t mean to! I didn’t …” You don’t finish your sentence because it doesn’t matter if you  _didn’t mean to._ You still did, and these people are still dead, and you cannot bring them back.

“You killed me, too,” he says. Voice hard as stone—all traces of honey-warmth erased entirely. He looks at you straight in the eye, and his stomach is dripping blood. Soaking his shirt. An axe is in your shaking hand, and it is covered in red, and he is still glaring at you with betrayal and horror and everything you’ve always feared, and—

“You deserve this, Runner Five.”

He crumples into a heap on the ground and he dies with the rest of them.

There is no library, no warm spring afternoon, no universe where this did not happen. You are left standing there, surrounded by what you did. 

There is the scent of burned flesh. Of the ocean. And of your very own terrible, incessant guilt.


	8. All that Glitters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anonymous prompt: Can you write something where Five was a literature major when they were in college and people can always find them in the little Abel library after runs?

“Just a little further, Five!” You’re running for your life, like always. You can  _smell_  them behind you – a sickening blend of worm-rot and flaking decay. Heart pounding in your head, Sam at your ear, you dodge through rain-slick alleys and crumbling buildings, your gasping breath the only thing grounding you here. Muscles heavy, muscles aching, you just want to get  _out_ of here. Out of the biting rain, the rotting corpse horde, the slippery terror.

The mass of zombies is closer, now, so close they’re crowding up at your back and have their teeth two inches away from your shoulder. You’re about to panic, to tell Sam  _well, this is it_ when miraculously, suddenly, a door. It is shimmering in the wall ahead of you, vines etched through it.

“There!” You stumble forward, hands blindly pushing into the stone, and your body tumbles into safety. The door swings shut, clicking closed, and the sound of the horde slowly fades away. Sweat trickling down your forehead, you lean on the wall, catching your breath.  _That was too close._

After you stop feeling like your lungs might tear open, you actually  _look_ around you and you can’t—believe what you’re seeing.

Above, there are spires of crystal and gold. The ceiling is so high you can barely see where it ends. Lemon-warm sunlight shines through the momentous windows. But the most extraordinary thing are the rows after rows after rows of books, journals, knowledge. An endless sea of it, each section beautifully organized and  _rich_. You step forward, almost afraid that the mirage is going to disappear right in front of you, but it stays steady. You make your way through the room, running your fingers over the plump, cloud-like armchairs that rest in corners of the room, sitting proudly next to lush arrangements of sweet-scented flowers.

Outside, you see no zombies, and no crumbling buildings, and no apocalypse. Only rolling hills, a meandering emerald river and and a sky so blue it could smother you. Here, you are safe. Here, you cannot be harmed.

Gleaming, dust-speckled light guides you through the room. It shines just a little brighter on a specific shelf – you look, and almost gasp. The shelf is full of all of your own, personal copies of your most favorite, loved books. You slip one out, awed at how it’s wrinkled and marked in all the places you remember. Flipping through it, you notice all the little notes you scribbled in the margins, your old bookmark, the way it smells like the last room you read it in – it’s all still there. You could cry, but you don’t, and you lean back in a gold-etched armchair and start reading. Your whole body relaxes at the first, familiar paragraph. A gentle sigh. The room is bathed in light and warmth, and you are content.

* * *

A hand on your shoulder drags you back to the waking world. “Five?”

You groan, desperately clinging on to the armchair and book and library of gold, but the hand tightens and you’re forced to blink open your eyes as the dream fades out. The first thing you see is Sam half-smiling at you, a raised eyebrow. “I can’t believe you fell asleep in the library  _again._ You do know you have a perfectly comfortable bed, right?”

Rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, Sam’s words sink in. You’re in Abel’s own little library. Looking past Sam, the bookshelves are sparse, near-broken and plain. No old favorite books or mint-edition classics. The roof is low and it smells like dust and rotting paper, and the only chairs are stiff and wooden. Outside, you see barbed wire and Abel’s chipped, towering walls. There are no gold-etched spires, no crystal windows, no place where the apocalypse won’t find you.

But there are drawings tacked on the wall from the kids who found joy in the stories here. But the few books that  _are_ here are wonderful, and loved, and so very vital to so many people. To you. This dimly lit, chilly place is a safe-haven when things get unbearable, and you really don’t know where you’d be without it.

Small, but important.


	9. Blue Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anon prompt: What did Runner Five dream about their first night at Abel after the rocket launcher, hospital run, being crowded by a bunch of new people and everything else?

You're sitting on a misty clifftop and stretching out around you there is a field of yellow grass. Your running-shoe feet are tucked underneath you and your gaze is fixed on the white, drifting fog. There is no bottom to the drop because there is no cliff, only mist, only the sensation of falling but not. Survival but not.

An old, rotted tree behind you. It is gray and hollow. You're floating. Cut out from yourself. The yellow-faded grass sways in the non-existent wind. Your fingers reach out into the air, and the air reaches back. It curls around your fingertips.

Survival but not.

Footsteps suddenly barge towards you from behind. You jolt, head jerking towards the noise, and every part of you wants to get up and run and hide in the tall grass. But there is a presence pushing you down and keeping you still. You see that man – Sam, was it? – you see the one who saved you; the one who called you by a name that had barely finished dying walking towards you.

Still, there is a sense of fragile comfort as you stare at him approach. In him, you see the possibility of safety. You see a stable landing-ground. The mist, too,  coils up. It responds gently to his careful movements, and if the mist trusts him ... Shouldn't you?

He is there. Next to you. Sam, yes, that’s his name. The sun is blurred and distant. His face. Blurred.

He must be safety, if the mist says so, and you almost want to reach your hands out to him – recklessly.

Until:  _we don’t want you here._

The harshest whisper of whispers whistles through the wind – so sharp it slices through the mist and right through you. You flinch back, away from its searing fire. Sam’s mouth does not move but there is a metal-hard edge to his eyes and you know, you  _know_ he’s thinking it.

The yellow grass rustles. Your chest is folding in on itself:  _you never should’ve come to Abel._

The mist coils around your fingers, still, except it does not lift this time and it is not gentle. It sticks to your skin and sinks into your bone marrow, and it hurts, and it  _itches,_ and it’s telling you, too. Even the mist. The grass shifts. Full of staring eyes. Glaring eyes. And Sam: the sharpness within his gaze gets sharper, mouth morphing into a bitter frown.

A horde of whispers, the mist digging in deeper:  _you should’ve died instead of her. Alice was our Five. Not you. It will never be you, impostor._

There is a rumble so huge in the distance, beyond the cliff, you know it will swallow you whole. You try to get up, to get out of here – just like they want, you’ve overstayed your welcome already – but the fog and that invisible hand dig you deeper into the muddy soil. They leave your shoulders bloody and bruised. So you’re left there. Watching as a hundred eyes swarm you, faces nothing but blur, but you can sense their bitterness and deep, terrible disgust. Sam’s deep, terrible grief filling the whole field and the whole world, too.

A blinding crack. Your chest is cracked and spilling open. Your landing-ground is split right through the middle. And Sam knows, and the people of Abel know, and the mist knows, and  _you_ know, too.

_You will never be their Runner Five._


	10. Cold Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anonymous prompt: What about dream where Five wakes up and sees everyone at Abel has turned grey?

You wake up that morning slowly, all soft muscles and a lightness you haven’t felt in years. Eyes blinking away the sleepiness, your dreams slip away, leaving nothing but an aftertaste of sweetness and peach.  _Ah. A good morning, for once._ Sun dapples kiss your face. Gently, gently, you ready yourself for your day, pulling on favorite socks and brushing hair. There is no stomach-ache dread or worry of what horrors the next run could bring – just a steady undercurrent of stability in yourself, in your friends, in the knowledge that you  _can_ cope. That the sun will keep rising no matter what.

So. A good start to the day.

Outside, the earth greets you tenderly, palms up. The breeze carries the scent of fresh-cut grass and hints of sweet honey. The sun is warm but not too warm on your skin, breaking through the cool morning mist. A bubble of quiet laughter breaks out in some distant corner of the township. A dog barks as it greets its most favorite human. You walk towards the mess hall, sighing out the last bit of tension held in your body.  _Hope there’s waffles for breakfast. There never are, but maybe with some luck …_

There are waffles for breakfast, and they are heaped with maple syrup and melted butter. You could cry when you sit down next to Sam, and he’s smiling at you. You’re all sitting outside and basking in the sunny weather. “Morning, Five! Can you  _believe_  that Janine let us break out the maple syrup for these waffles?”

“I’m pretty sure this is the best day of my life,” says Jody, eyes drinking in her plateful.

Maxine hands you a glass of real,  _actual_ fruit juice. It is your favorite kind, and it tastes even better than you remember. You sip on it, still in awe that your morning has been so lovely. So … not full of panic nor death. The atmosphere in Abel is thick with shining, expansive hope – something none of you have felt in a long, long time. It’s so big it’s almost scary. Almost overwhelming, but it isn’t. Because Sam is nudging you with his knee, and your friends are all laughing over their food. There is tenderness and love in their eyes all directed at you. And the sun is warm against your neck. The trees are green, the flowers blooming. The world: gently, palms up.

It’s almost too good to be true. You’ve never seen everyone so full of joy. So  _normal._ Like the apocalypse never happened, or like there aren’t hordes of the undead clawing at the walls right outside.  _God, just relax. Stop worrying so much and just enjoy this. I mean, happiness can’t be scary. It shouldn’t be. Relax._

But the syrup is sticking to the back of your throat, and now that you look closer, Sam’s smile has an edge to it. Like it’s held together, maybe. And Maxine’s laugh is so bright it grates, and Jody’s eyes glint with something larger than life and larger than joy.

A worming, hot ache makes its way into your heart.

It hurts. Why does this  _hurt_?

All at once: “Runner Five? What’s up with that frown?”

“Relax for once!”

“C’mon, Five, join us.”

 _Join us._ Your head throbs, and suddenly the stench of  _rot_  burns your nose, and you lurch back, searching for the source. Sam touches your shoulder, but his nails are digging into your skin, and there is a sharp hunger in Jody’s eyes.

_Something is terribly wrong._

A hiss in all their voices: “Relax. Join us, Runner Five.”

The illusion crests, cracks, shatters.

The waffles are mold-ridden-green, squirming with maggots. The plates are cracked and dilapidated. The table is sagging with brown moss and rot, and the kitchen behind you is caved in, nothing but splintered planks and shattered windows. Abel's walls are crumbling, its trees torn down, scorch marks blemishing the ground.

But the worst part. Oh, god, the worst part, of course, of  _course,_ are your friends sitting in front of you: skin an ashy gray and eyes sunken, missing, clawed out. There are deep teeth marks on hands and shoulders. Their clothes are broken open and seams gone. Their jaws are hinged open, veins bloated, hair all clumped and they are nothing but smell of death and of tragedy in motion.

All of them are  _zombies_.

“Shit!” You jolt up, but Sam has still got a rotten hand on your shoulder pulling you down, and he’s looking at you with nothing but hunger and spinal-cord-instinct. A dragged out, wheezing noise is coming from all around you, but you wrench yourself out of Sam’s terrible grasp, and you’re pretty sure you’ve lost all feeling in your fingers. Maxine and Jody stumble to their feet. The way they look at you – the way they  _don’t_ – is so incomprehensible you can’t … This can’t be happening. You take a step away and they shamble forward, following the scent of your rushing, panicked blood.

You take twenty steps back and blink tears out of your eyes, and start running, and this really cannot be happening, because you were just—you were just eating breakfast two seconds ago, and laughing over the sound of kids playing, and the world was gentle and soft and not a horrible burned husk of a place—none of your friends were _zombies—_

There is the brown-rust of blood staining Janine’s walls. You are trying to get to the gates, to get out, to leave and never have to look at the gaunt zombie-faces of Sam and Maxine ever again. The ear-ringing sound of zombies is everywhere as they wake up to the sound of your pounding feet. They shamble out of dark alleys and reach for your ankles out of collapsed rubble. Your own legs trip over themselves, and you have a sense of falling with every step. 

Suddenly: surrounded. Suddenly: cornered. The sun is blotted out, and there is no fresh-cut-grass-air, and you can’t  _breathe_ , and you are pinned to the wall by a sea of loved faces turned monstrous; faces wanting nothing but to destroy and consume you. As they press closer, unseeing and unbearable, you’re dragged into a future you want no part of but have no choice to join:

You, dying by your friends’ hands. Your body is bled out on the ground, trying to writhe and cough and scream the sickness out but there is no one left to help.

Sam’s indifferent, milky gaze passes right through your writhing attempt at staying alive. Maxine does not look at you and shambles off into a mist. Jody does nothing but gnaw on your broken arm, unseeing gaze staring far off and beyond you.

The sun is cold. Your hands are, too. 

And you die there. Heartbroken. Begging. Alone.


	11. A Dim Light and Nothing Else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from an anon: Why not a scenario where our current five sees us in a timeline where there was no apocalypse and compares it to theirs now. Wakes up to Sam cuddling them, smiles (still half asleep).

A living room and a dim light.

You’re staring at a person on the couch, bathed in the blue glow of the television, feet peeking out of an old, favorite blanket.

It's you. Yourself.

_Wait – what?_ Taking a choked breath in, you tentatively step forward. A peculiar, fragile sense of half-wonder, half-fear, because your nose looks odd from this angle and do you really  _sit_  like that? Does your hair always look so soft? Like seeing a photograph, but stranger, because this you is – real. Dimensional. You lean in closer, but other-you does not notice.

“Hey – can you hear me?”

Nothing. You watch other-you shift, eyes heavy with sleep. Your hand reaches out, wanting to—see. Understand. Your fingers pass right through them, phantom-like and disappointing.  _Hm. Guess I’m the ghost here._

A sudden rattling, shaking noise coming from behind you makes you flinch, and you spin around, legs already tensed to run for it—

It's the washing machine in the kitchen. That’s what that noise was. You’re not about to die. Muscles relaxing a little, you focus on the rest of the room: a lamp turned on low. Rain soaking the night outside. A faint glow of streetlamps in the distance. A phone plugged into its charger. A laptop half-closed and precariously perched on the couch. A tall glass of water and a brand of chips you haven’t seen in years.

A calendar tacked onto the wall saying that it’s two months after the apocalypse happened. It should be, at least, but –

There’s the peculiar  _absence_  of zombies.

A lightning bolt realization strikes you:  _the outbreak never happened in this universe. The world never ended, and I …_ Your eyes focus back in on other-you, and you see no debris-scars nor strong, steady calf muscles. No running shoes in the house and no armband. _I never became Runner Five._ That thought brings a small swell of relief, maybe, but a much larger crush of disappointment on its heels. Because that’s all you’ve known, all you’ve accomplished that’s been  _meaningful_ but still, but still, there are no horrors here or in other-you. And that’s good, right?

Suddenly: a bird’s-eye-view. A bird’s-eye-experience of this universe where nothing happened.

You see yourself waking up late and starting the day slow, so slowly it's terrifying, and you keep wanting to tell yourself to  _hurry, hurry, the zombies won’t wait all day—_

But there aren’t any zombies, and other-you leaves the house without so much as a sigh, and barely looks when crossing the street. You trail behind, wincing whenever someone passes you, because your body still thinks every moving person is a shambler, and is not used to this world where that is not true. The rush of cars is loud – skull-shaking loud; you forgot how  _loud_ a city is – but other-you doesn’t seem to mind. Walks and walks and never runs.

A pang of bitter, fractured jealousy hits you as you watch yourself stop at a bakery and buy something sweet. Other-you bites into it and sits in the sun, sighing. Content. Your own jaw clenches as you stare:  _None of this is – none of this is fair. I could’ve lived here, like this. If the outbreak never happened – I could’ve been happy like this. Safe._

A gust of wind shifts the scene in front of you into a forest – not just any forest, you realize, but  _Abel’s_ forest, with its familiar pines and roots and winding paths.

Other-you is there: alone, and in hiking clothes, and still cannot see you. You both advance through the trees, steady and at an easy pace. You, on high-alert, your body constantly ready for the zombies that reside here to drag out of the bushes. Other-you, relaxed and unaware, does not scan the trees, does not rush. Stops to smell the wildflowers.

A burning ache in your chest bothers you as you watch: _t_ _his other life, this no-outbreak life is overwhelmingly different and good. It's safe. Showing me this is—cruel._

Janine’s farmhouse in the distance catches your eye, tucked into a small copse of trees. Off to the side. No walls. No radio-tower nor armory.

No Abel Township.

It hits you, there, how wrong it looks. No one you love is there anymore – scattered around the world, living distinct, never-crossing lives. Other-you never meets them, and lives unaware of Sam’s laugh, or the way Dr Myers calms a room by just walking in, or how Eight can steady you with just a look. 

Slowly, slowly, deeper details of other-you click into place. The dark under-eye circles. The way other-you has not talked to a single person this whole time, and how that seems unintentional. Unwanted. That tired, desperate smile to the baker and a slow, weary walk home. The dim-lit room, the lonely ache permeating the air, the way everything is colder here. Less important.  _Disconnected._

But of course, of course meeting Sam and Maxine and everyone else at Abel will  _never, ever_ be worth the weight and the atrocity of the apocalypse. You having  _purpose_  does not outweigh its terrible, irreparable cost. Other-you’s life, although lonely, is insurmountably  _better_.

And yet. Something inside your chest still gnaws and twists at the way other-you does not even glance at Janine’s farmhouse. At the way there are no running shoes, no headset, no  _Runner Five_ etched into anything. There is no evidence of the person you’ve grown into.

Loss. There is still loss here.

* * *

You wake up to a warm hand around your waist and a slat-sagging ceiling. The distant, relentless groan of zombies barely reaches you. Instead, you focus in on the steady breathing of Sam, and the way your whole heart sugar-melts when you realize that at least here, at least in this universe, you are not alone.

In spite of everything, here, you have people to come home to.


	12. Intangible, Tangible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anonymous prompt: For the dream prompt -- what does runner five miss the most? (Please and thank you!!!)

Bodies. That’s the first thing you’re sure of. There are breathing, living bodies all around you, the lotus-sound of hundreds of footsteps all at once, and total darkness.

It is a crowd pressing in and in.

And you're in the midst of it all, trying to blink the dark out of your eyes. You scramble to figure out where you are and why – why the only thing you can see are your hands in front of you and the neon-red  _Runner 5_ armband on your wrist. The crowd pushes by with weighty shoulders bumping past yours and muttered, annoyed  _get out of the way_ sighs. Clenching your jaw, you step forward, and immediately slam into someone. It is humid, here, and you can already feel your chest squeezing in on itself. Your armband glows, bright and sore-like. You push through, step around, trip on someone’s feet.

Your knees slam into the hard, concrete ground and your elbows do too. A bruised, hot feeling spreads from your limbs to your head and eats up your stomach.  _I need – to get out._ Hands touch head. No headset. No Abel. Sticky-sweat, you crawl to your feet, knees throbbing and ears rushing.

Armband: glows.  _Runner Five._ A reminder you cannot ignore in this inky-dark place.

Forward, forward, you get two steps of progress when there is brightness. A crushing, blinding light floods the entire place, bends the dark out, and gives you a splitting headache. The world is nothing but saturation and a terrible fear of what you will see once the spots clear until—

You’re in a city, you realize. It's your old, favorite city. The buildings are new and un-crumbled and full. The sky is a brilliant, overwhelming shade of blue, and the sun is a warm spotlight. And the terrifying crowd? Nothing but a swarm of people on their way to some other life you have no part in. Quickly, you step to the side, pressing yourself against a wall.

There are no zombies. That’s important. And there are cars, and coffee shops with pastries in the windows, and billboards and cellphones and street-music and everything that was lost in the outbreak is here, untouched.

And yet, your armband is stuck to your skin – the brand that reminds the world of what is coming, of who you are and what you’ve done. The hero, the unstoppable, the unforgettable Runner Five. Near-mythical, maybe. You’re sure everyone walking past can smell it on you, and some part of you wants to take off the number and hide it and all the  _5’s –_ on your jacket, your pack, in the way you carry yourself. Someone here is going to see you, and they are going to  _know,_ and you will have to take on some weight you cannot carry, but will have no choice in the matter. Because you’re Five.

You tug at the piece of cloth. But it’s –  _fuck,_ it’s sewn into your skin, and it glows brighter than ever, and you want nothing but to tear it off but you can't.

A force tugs you into the horde of people. Eyes, everywhere, are on you, and they pierce deep into your skin. They flick over the armband and the debris-scars on your body and the heavy-set pack. Except – nothing happens. The eyes are curious for a second, maybe, but then they skitter off you and go back to their own, full place in this world. And there is nothing asked of you, no threat appears out of some dark alley, and no one yells at you to run. A minute passes, and twenty other gazes do too, and you realize that there is no Runner Five here.

You are just another person in the crowd.

You're anonymous and working through your day like everyone else. There is no reverence, no fear, no adoration and no hatred. And so you ease your way into the rush of people, and you keep walking. You grab a smoothie at the coffee shop in awe, almost, and walk to a park. Find a bench and a garden. An older lady passes you with her dog and gives you a small smile in passing. Some sort of pressure you never knew you were holding releases from your chest, a fist unclenched. No one knows who you are, so you drink your smoothie in peace, and you watch the ducks in the pond, and the eyes around you cannot hurt you and cannot ask anything of you. The sun is just the sun, the world is just the world, and you are no hero here.

_A relief._


	13. Remember my Name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anonymous prompt: What about a dream where Alice never died and Project Greenshoot never happened so Five is just in the background and never became friends with Sam, Maxine, or any of the runners?

You see a flash of dark hair and nervous hands and you know it’s him: Sam. With a small smile, you half-jog over to him, wanting to tell him about this dream you had, and if he’s seen that new mural they made in Sector C, so you walk up to him easily.

“Hey, Sam! What’re you up to out here?” You ask, hand on his shoulder.

He flinches, hard, turning to look at you with … what, is that fright? Shit. You just jumpscared your best friend.

You fall back quickly, hands to your sides. “Oh – oh, sorry for sneaking up on you. Quiet feet and all that,” you say, a sheepish grin.

He blinks, taking another step back. “Uh … Sorry, but do I know you?”

Your heart slips on its beat. You crack a nervous smile, tilting your head at him. “Yeah, yeah, very funny. Forget your best runner. That’s a great idea.”

His face is blank. And he’s nervously shifting, now, looking at anywhere but you. “I’m – I really don’t know who you are. Seriously.”

Your whole stomach turns inside out. He’s dead serious. “What? Sam, stop joking around. We've been friends forever.”

And now people are stopped around you. Watching, confused. You see Dr Myers in the background, staring at you with a blank, perplexed gaze. Like she, too, does not know who you are, and why you’re treating Sam like you’ve known him forever.

You’re so confused you feel the ground shift under you, and he’s taking more steps back, worried about you and him and him and this isn’t … This can’t be right. More eyes. A tense silence, spread out thin. He’s still nervous, and serious, and he really does not recognize you.

You break. “I – sorry, yeah, you’re right. I confused you with an old friend of mine, I’m—I’m so sorry! I’ve had a long night. I’ll … let you go. I’ll go.” Nervous and sweating and reeling, you turn back the way you came. He nods, swallowing. Relief obvious on his face.

Panic obvious on yours.

You pick up chatter on your way out. Jody sprints by you – and there is another runner next to her. A runner with – wait, what?

That’s definitely a  _Runner 5_ armband. And those are definitely your shoes, and that’s your backpack, and—

That’s Alice. The same Alice who was shot in the head after turning, and Sam grieved over for all those dark, lonely months. She's supposed to be  _dead._

But she isn’t. She’s Runner Five. And you’re wearing heavy boots and muddy overalls, you realize. You realize everything all at once:  _you’re_  not Runner Five. You were, maybe, and now you’re not. No one recognizes you here. Not Sam. Not the doc. Not any of the other runners.

You’re unknown.

You end up in the old barn and in a silent corner. Crying, shaky, you wipe at your swollen, wet eyes. Your whole body feels the weight of the truth –  _you were never a runner –_ and you’re bursting full at the seams with terrible and bright and meaningful memories that never happened.

Helping out in the farms: that’s what you’ve been doing. All you have is a blurred single memory of soil, and early-morning crops, and a room full of no one.

All the other pieces of memories that should not exist swarm you: your first run outside Abel, Sam’s voice at your ear, the ocean and needles and long night-trips and Eight’s cooking and the way Dr Myers smiled at you during your third training run and—

You hold your head, bursting, bursting. The walls sway, the sun is near-blue, and everything is wrong.You're not Runner Five – Alice is. You’re not Five. Not Five. Alice is. Alice.

Slowly, slowly, the sun crawls forward. There is dirt under your fingernails. In some small, selfish part of you, there is a curled up relief. If you’re not Five, not a runner, then … at least you won’t have to watch your friends die, or run from hordes of decaying corpses, or live in a constant, relentless state of fight-or-flight. At least you'll be safe.

You dig your fingernails into the earth as guilt eats up your stomach. No.  _No_ , it is not a relief, because Alice must live it instead. And no one should. But someone has to.

And it is not you.

You drift out of yourself. Up, up, towards the near-blue sun. You watch yourself go to bed alone. Eat alone. Wake up shaky, even without the horrors outside those walls. You see yourself watch Sam from the corner of your eye in the mess, and the way you never meet his gaze. Alice belly-laughs with him instead, and Dr Myers sets up D&D with them. Jody knits Alice a scarf and you, still, blankly watch from afar. Alice does not sleep, and there are dark circles under her eyes, and she has quiet roof-night conversations with Eight, or Jody, or Sam. You watch the township rise and fall and you, you, cower in some corner as the next catastrophe hits. Seeing the runners gather, the drills happen, the pancakes and long watches and blisters. Watching, watching, receding into yourself so far you cannot reach it or them or any of this.

No one approaches you. They can smell it on you: you're not one of them.


	14. Moon Curse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from crazyspookies: Hey! You're really talented and you always pull me into the narrative like im right there, it's amazing! in s3 someone says "there's something inside you, five" and it was terrifying, what can you do with this? >:)c

You sidle up next to Sam, handing him a rusted can of peaches.

“Thanks. I think I’ve eaten enough canned peaches to last a lifetime, but hey, food’s food. Especially out here,” he says, giving you a warm smile. You nod back, cracking open your own can and staring at the campfire.  _God, I’m tired. Can’t wait to get back to Abel._ The flame burns slow, smoke reaching up into the bright, bright stars and moon. Janine fiddles with her knife, carving wood into a sharp something while Jody nervously watches your surroundings.

The nights out in the field are always hardest. The waiting for daybreak, the listening, the way you can never quite relax even if nothing is wrong. And you really can’t relax tonight. For some reason, the second you got back to the campfire, you started feeling … itchy and restless, itchy and irritated at the slightest sounds. Janine’s whittling has got your jaw set, hard, and the way Sam is _chewing_ and  _swallowing_ is making you claw your nails into the log underneath you.

There is a bubbling feeling in your stomach and a hot, acidic sensation right at the back of your mouth. You sigh, you breathe deeply, you try to draw your attention to anything other than the building, uncomfortable feeling in your gut. Sam keeps eating. Jody taps her fingers on her water bottle. Janine scrapes her knife against the wood.

Prickly, unbearable annoyance washes through you, and you glare at the campfire. “Guys? Could you keep it down a little?”

They all still, staring at you. For one glorious moment, there is finally silence, and peace, and you wait for the burning feeling to fade.

It doesn’t.

Instead, it presses harder against your stomach and rushes up your throat, an invisible sort of choking. It is vast. Indescribable. And it is something much, much  _more_ than simple annoyance.

“Were we being loud? Sorry, Five, it’s just a little boring around here.” Sam with his sheepish grin. Sam with that soft voice.

The geyser-like pressure is pushing right into your very bones, a pressure that keeps on tightening, and you’re starting to fear you might—burst. Snap and pour out of yourself and do something stupid, like throw Janine’s knife into the fire, or crush that tin of peaches with your bare hands.

“No, it’s fine. I’m just a bit on edge. I think I need some space.”

Jody nods, and Sam does too, and it happens the second you stand up.

You have a hand on Sam’s shoulder when the feeling inside you crests, crests, and breaks. Suddenly: you’re dizzy. Suddenly: your very own hand is digging its fingers into Sam’s shoulder. Deeper, deeper. So deep he’s gasping out and flinching back. “Five—you’re hurting me!”

“I—!” You try to pull your hand back and force it off his shoulder. But your grip is cement-strong, and the feeling sinks itself deeper into your sinew, and your nails are digging until a small pool of blood is soaking into his shirt. Janine has her hands on you, wrenching you away, but the damage is done. Sam is …  _bleeding_. You made Sam bleed and hurt and stare at you like  _that_. You step way back, eyes wide and breath laced with panic.  _Why? Why the fuck did I just do that?_

The feeling, the more-than-annoyance, the vast thing you cannot quite describe starts to push, and push, and push against your skin in the dead silence that follows.  _Why did I …_  The crackle of the fire. The rustle of the trees. The nervous shifting of your feet. And the bubbling, bubbling geyser right below the surface.

Far, far away, Janine says: “What the  _hell_  was that, Runner Five?”

But you are staring at your hand. You know the feeling is rooted there. That … force, that heat, that  _intent._

You are staring, waiting, each moment longer than the last until the feeling rushes to your fingertips and overflows: a white, bony fog erupts from your hand, taking bits of your skin with it, and your blood is not blood. It is black sludge and you stumble back, throat raw from the screaming, but the mist stays in place, the mist is your hand but not, your hand but there are bone-mist strings attached to it, it is—

Malignant.

You end up in a swamp, socks soaked through. The bone-mist is forcing you to grip something in your throbbing hand. The edge of it glints, silver, and you remember—something happened right after the fog. You had the knife and the black acid, and your hand sank it into someone’s ribs. There was the crunching of bone and wet wash of hot blood. Sam's look of terror and betrayal and utter horror, tears welling up, all directed at  _you._ You tripped on burning logs, a terrible wailing sound coming from the ground but you couldn’t stop. You  _couldn’t_  stop. Now, here, you're running. Footsteps splash behind you as you stumble through the muggy night. The unbearably bright moon glints off the muddied water you wade through.

 _Stop. Stop._ Darting a glance behind you as you push your way through thick grass and deep, sticky water, the knife is still gripped tight in your hand. You grit your teeth, staring at your arm and the knife. You ... You could get rid of the mist, the bloodied knife, the  _thing_  inside you. It would take your arm with it, but wouldn’t that be better than  _this_? 

The second you think it, a burst of stinging, excruciating pain wracks your good arm, and the bone-smoke seeps out of it, too. With dawning horror, you realize this is not something you can just cut off. It’s a part of you that is weaved deep into everything you do, are, and feel.

You heave yourself forward, sickened and wounded. There are torches and fire and loud footsteps behind you. Black acid drips from both arms, each drop leaving blisters in its wake, and you lurch through the bog. Shaking. Your brain is still your own but half your body is not, and there is a crawling sensation in your legs. You know that soon enough it will take them, too. It has a malicious, selfish intent that will consume everything you love with its hunger.

Near-crying, near-desperate, you make a decision: you sink yourself into the dark, slimy water, head first. Water floods your nostrils. You’ve got the thick mud in your lungs and clouding your eyes and for a second, for one single second, the mist almost abates and almost draws itself back into the terrible recesses it came from.

You’ve never been lucky, though.

The stinging fog leaks out of your legs and forces your body up and out of its slippery demise.

Janine’s hard voice: “There! I think I see Five!” The brush moving, water sloshing, your breathing a high-pitched wheeze.  _Take me. Take—_

The mist shudders and pulls your legs forward. Even damaged, even dripping acid, they move you forward. There are swarms of gnats and there is mud in your mouth. And you, and you, trying to force your muscles to do anything but be dragged by the bone-sharp mist. You catch the glint of fire behind you—smoke—smoke and a voice you don’t  _want_ to recognize: “Burn the bog!”

The moon, bright and big in the sky. You glance up at it and as you slam your shin into a stone, the moon shimmers emerald, shimmers ruby, shimmers fire.

 _The_   _moon curse._

Even the grass whispers it. Even the mud knows.

The fog tugs your unwilling, trembling muscles through the dark, through the burning marsh, and you can do nothing but watch. A monstrous thing. A hunted thing. The voices of your friends fade out, fade back, and you’re stuck running. Stuck, and stuck, and more terrified than you’ve ever been.

Behind you: a swamp on fire. The rotting body of someone you love. An act you will never escape.

Ahead of you, there is a lonely path. Even as you cry out, even as you desperately plead and shake and dig your heels into the earth, you are heaved forward. Woods, craggy hills, nights and days and nights. There is no rest. Even though you are no longer being chased down, the thing inside you doesn’t want you to stop running. Not now and not ever.

And so, with no one else around to break, it decides to break  _you_.


End file.
